Back up or move Outlook

- [Instructor] I'm going to show you where your data actually resides on your computer and also, how to export your Outlook file. Now, technically the data does belong to a server because I've added a Gmail account and a Microsoft Exchange account, so I'm only using an offline version of the data, but it's still here. To see it, click file, make sure you're on info on the left, click account settings, and then account settings again. From here, change the data files tab.

This is going to show you where all the data files for your account are located. You'll notice it ends with the file OST. That's an offline file extension. Because this data is hosted online, I'm looking at an offline version of it, which takes up less room. If you wanna see where it is on your computer, you can select your file and click open file location. It's going to take you right to it and you can see how big it is. From here, you could right click on it, choose send to, and back it up to an external device.

I'll click X to close out of this. I'll hit close on this dialog, and let's go back into the file menu. This time, I'm going to choose open and export. I could open a different Outlook data file. This is a good way to import data in, but from here, I'm going to choose import, export. I'll choose to export to a file. I'll click next, and now I need to decide how I'm going to export it. If I'm exporting my Outlook file to move it to a different computer, I can choose PST.

However, if I wanna export a certain file, such as my contact list for use in a different program, I would choose comma-separated values. I'll choose PST for now and click next. Here's where I need to choose a folder to export from. If I did wanna export my contacts as a CSV file, I would have chosen comma-separated values in that last option and I'd select my contact list. I can also click the triangle to expand it if I had multiple contact folders and wanted just one particular folder.

In this case, however, I'm going to choose to export my inbox. If I had more than one mailbox, I can also click the triangle. Here I can choose a particular folder, or I can select the root folder and make sure I have include subfolders checked. If I wanna export my entire Outlook file to bring it over to a new computer, I can choose the root of my account. As long as I have include subfolders checked, it will export everything. Depending on the size of your Outlook file, it could take a while.

I'll click next, I'll click browse to choose where I wanna export it to, and click OK. I'll choose some options that handles duplicate items, click finish, and I can add a password if I want to, though I don't have to. I'll click OK for now, and my Outlook file will be exported. When it's all done, I can minimize this and see the backup file that's been placed on my computer.